02372cam a22002417 4500001000600000003000500006005001700011008004100028100002100069245015000090260006600240490004100306500001900347520137900366530006101745538007201806538003601878700002501914710004201939830007601981856003702057856003602094w6949NBER20150303175234.0150303s1999 mau||||fs|||| 000 0 eng d1 aRangel, Antonio.10aCan Market and Voting Institutions Generate Optimal Intergenerational Risk Sharing?h[electronic resource] /cAntonio Rangel, Richard Zeckhauser. aCambridge, Mass.bNational Bureau of Economic Researchc1999.1 aNBER working paper seriesvno. w6949 aFebruary 1999.3 aAre market and voting institutions capable of producing optimal intergenerational risk-sharing? To study this question, we consider a simple endowment economy with uncertainty and overlapping generations. Endowments are stochastic; thus it is possible to increase the welfare of every generation using intergenerational transfers that might depend on the state of the world. We characterize the transfers that are necessary to restore efficiency and compare them to the transfers that take place in markets and voting institutions. Unlike most of that literature, we study both ex-ante and interim risk-sharing. Our main conclusion is that both types of institutions have serious problems. Markets cannot generate ex-ante risk-sharing because agents can trade only after they are born. Furthermore, markets generate interim efficient insurance in some but not all economies because they cannot generate forward (old to young) intergenerational transfers. This market failure, in theory, could be corrected by government intervention. However, as long as government policy is determined by voting, intergenerational transfers might by driven more by redistributive politics than by risk sharing considerations. Successful government intervention can arise, even though agents can only vote after they are born, but only if the young determine policy in every election. aHardcopy version available to institutional subscribers. aSystem requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files. aMode of access: World Wide Web.1 aZeckhauser, Richard.2 aNational Bureau of Economic Research. 0aWorking Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)vno. w6949.4 uhttp://www.nber.org/papers/w694941uhttp://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w6949